2.14 From Laptops to ASICs: A Hardware Story

In 2009, when Bitcoin launched, you could mine new coins on a regular laptop using its main processor. By 2010, graphics cards (the same ones used for gaming) turned out to be way faster, and people started building rigs with multiple GPUs.

By 2013, custom chips called ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits) appeared. These chips do exactly one thing — Bitcoin's SHA-256 hash — and they do it thousands of times faster and more efficiently than any general-purpose hardware ever could.

Today, the only competitive mining hardware is specialised ASICs from a handful of manufacturers. A modern unit costs a few thousand dollars and uses about as much power as an electric heater.

Some people see this specialisation as a centralising force, but it actually makes Bitcoin more secure: attacking the network would require billions of dollars worth of hardware that has no other use. That economic moat is part of Bitcoin's defense.